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Famous Broom Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Broom poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous broom poems. These examples illustrate what a famous broom poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...and hangs him up to dry.
That's Nature, the kind mother of us all.
And then your slattern housemaid swings her broom,
And where's your spider? And that's Nature, also.
It's Nature, and it's Nothing. It's all Nothing.
It's all a world where bugs and emperors
Go singularly back to the same dust,
Each in his time; and the old, ordered stars
That sang together, Ben, will sing the same
Old stave to-morrow."

When he talks like that,
There's nothing for a h...Read more of this...



by Bukowski, Charles
...ouching there upon its back
drawing its certain blood
as the world goes by outside
and my temples scream
and I hurl the broom against them:
the spider dull with spider-anger
still thinking of its prey
and waving an amazed broken leg;
the fly very still,
a dirty speck stranded to straw;
I shake the killer loose
and he walks lame and peeved
towards some dark corner
but I intercept his dawdling
his crawling like some broken hero,
and the straws smash his legs
now waving
above hi...Read more of this...

by Betjeman, John
...e I spend my days
Behind this Church of England baize.
I share my dark forgotten room
With two oil-lamps and half a broom.
The cleaner never bothers me,
So here I eat my frugal tea.
My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;
My jam is polish for the floor.
Christmas and Easter may be feasts
For congregations and for priests,
And so may Whitsun. All the same,
They do not fill my meagre frame.
For me the only feast at all
Is Autumn's Harvest Festival,
When I ...Read more of this...

by Bowers, Edgar
...two mules. They kicked. Thirteen, I ran.)
And then the field: thread-leaf maple, deciduous
Magnolia, hybrid broom, and, further down,
In light shade, one Franklinia Alatamaha
In solstice bloom, all white, most graciously.
On the sunnier slope, the wild plums that my mother
Later would make preserves of, to give to friends
Or sell, in autumn, with the foxgrape, quince,
Elderberry, and muscadine. Around
The granite overhang, moist den of foxes;
Gradually up ...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...scarlet tips, proclaiming dawning day; 
 The hamlets are astir, and crowds come out— 
 Bearing fresh branches of the broom—about 
 To seek their Lady, who herself awakes 
 Rosy as morn, just when the morning breaks; 
 Half-dreaming still, she ponders, can it be 
 Some mystic change has passed, for her to see 
 One old man in the place of two quite young! 
 Her wondering eyes search carefully and long. 
 It may be she regrets the change: meanwhile, 
 The valiant kni...Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...r> 
There came a hurry of feet and little feet, 
A sweep of lute strings, laughs, and whifts of song, -- 
Flower o' the broom, 
Take away love, and our earth is a tomb! 
Flower o' the quince, 
I let Lisa go, and what good in life since? 
Flower o' the thyme--and so on. Round they went. 
Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter 
Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight,--three slim shapes, 
And a face that looked up . . . zooks, sir, flesh and blood...Read more of this...

by Corso, Gregory
...th
 a barnacled wreath on the moon-squid's head
 Let me in Bomb rise from that pregnant-rat corner
 nor fear the raised-broom nations of the world
 O Bomb I love you
 I want to kiss your clank eat your boom
 You are a paean an acme of scream
 a lyric hat of Mister Thunder
 O resound thy tanky knees
 BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM
 BOOM ye skies and BOOM ye suns
 BOOM BOOM ye moons ye stars BOOM
 nights ye BOOM ye days ye BOOM
 BOOM BOOM ye winds ye clouds ye rains
 go BANG ye lakes...Read more of this...

by Kenyon, Jane
...ours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea, 
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine....Read more of this...

by Wilbur, Richard
...in of worlds, with a gesture sure and noble
He reels that heaven in, 
Landing it ball by ball, 
And trades it all for a broom, a plate, a table.

Oh, on his toe the table is turning, the broom's 
Balancing up on his nose, and the plate whirls 
On the tip of the broom! Damn, what a show, we cry: 
The boys stamp, and the girls
Shriek, and the drum booms
And all come down, and he bows and says good-bye....Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...ess of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...nd sail on down the hill.

 O he was the one who was born to be king! That one, turn-

 ing down through the Scotch broom and going over an upside-

 down car abandoned in the yellow grass. That one, his gray

 wings .

 One morning last week, part way through the dawn, I awoke

under the apple tree, to hear a dog barking and the rapid

sound of hoofs coming toward me. The millennium? An in-

vasion of Russians all wearing deer feet?

 I opened my eyes and saw...Read more of this...

by Machado, Antonio
...Who set, between those rocks like cinder,
to show the honey of dream,
that golden broom,
those blue rosemaries?
Who painted the purple mountains
and the saffron, sunset sky?
The hermitage, the beehives,
the cleft of the river
the endless rolling water deep in rocks,
the pale-green of new fields,
all of it, even the white and pink
under the almond trees!...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...ising on the beach, 
a piano at her fingertips, shame 
on her lips and a flute's speech. 
And I was the knock-kneed broom instead. 
At night, alone, I marry the bed. 
She took you the way a women takes 
a bargain dress off the rack 
and I broke the way a stone breaks. 
I give back your books and fishing tack. 
Today's paper says that you are wed. 
At night, alone, I marry the bed. 
The boys and girls are one tonight. 
They unbutton blouses....Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
...us course thro' yonder meads,
I play'd; unconscious then of future ill! 
There (where, from hollows fring'd with yellow broom,
The birch with silver rind, and fairy leaf,
Aslant the low stream trembles) I have stood,
And meditated how to venture best
Into the shallow current, to procure
The willow herb of glowing purple spikes,
Or flags, whose sword-like leaves conceal'd the tide,
Startling the timid reed-bird from her nest,
As with aquatic flowers I wove the wreath,
Such as,...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...e kings, to the czars,
 Good-night to the kaiser.
The breakdown and the fade-away begins.
The shadow of a great broom, ready to sweep out the trash, is here.

One finger is raised that counts the czar,
The ghost who beckoned men who come no more—
The czar gone to the winds on God’s great dustpan,
The czar a pinch of nothing,
The last of the gibbering Romanoffs.

Out and good-night—
The ghosts of the summer palaces
And the ghosts of the winter palaces!
Out and ...Read more of this...

by Eluard, Paul
...the weapons of warriors 
On the crown of kings 
I write your name 

On the jungle and the desert 
On the nests, on the broom 
On the echo of my childhood 
I write your name 

On the wonders of nights 
On the white bread of days 
On the seasons betrothed 
I write your name 

d'azur On all my blue rags 
On the sun-molded pond 
On the moon-enlivened lake 
I write your name 

On the fields, on the horizon 
On the wings of birds 
And on the mill of shadows 
I write your name 

On...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...o pathway meets the wanderer's ken,
     Unless he climb with footing nice
     A far-projecting precipice.
     The broom's tough roots his ladder made,
     The hazel saplings lent their aid;
     And thus an airy point he won,
     Where, gleaming with the setting sun,
     One burnished sheet of living gold,
     Loch Katrine lay beneath him rolled,
     In all her length far winding lay,
     With promontory, creek, and bay,
     And islands that, empurpled br...Read more of this...

by Moore, Marianne
...cautiously works down the tree, helped

by his tail. The giant-pangolin-
 tail, graceful tool, as a prop or hand or broom or ax, tipped like
an elephant's trunkwith special skin,
 is not lost on this ant- and stone-swallowing uninjurable
 artichoke which simpletons thought a living fable
 whom the stones had nourished, whereas ants had done
 so. Pangolins are not aggressive animals; between
 dusk and day they have not unchain-like machine-like
 form and frictionless c...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...eless as silkworms, stitching my fate,
and I scream at them to come out of my house,
and I try beating them away with a broom,
but as they go out, so they crawl back again,
until I start screaming and crying, my flesh
raining with sweat, and she ravage the book
for the dream meaning, and there was nothing;
my nerves melt like a jellyfish - that was when I broke -
they found me round the Savannah, screaming:

All you see me talking to the wind, so you think I mad.
Well, Sh...Read more of this...

by Buson, Yosa
...lmen
washing in the river.

The short night--
bubbles of crab froth
among the river reeds.

The short night--
a broom thrown away
on the beach.

The short night--
the Oi River
has sunk two feet.

The short night--
on the outskirts of the village
a small shop opening.

The short night--
broken, in the shallows,
a crescent moon.

The short night--
the peony
has opened.

The short night--
waves beating in,
an abandoned fire.

The short night--
nea...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs